the hudson tunnel is absolutely massive and  was the first large-scale tunneling project  

under a prominent american river originally  intended to be the first trans river rail  

link between jersey city and manhattan the tunnel  took more than 30 years to complete the history  

of the tunnel is a fascinating example of  early gilded age engineering technology  

and is considered a notable engineering  achievement today we will discover the story of  

the hudson tunnel and how it came to be i'm your  host ryan socash and you're watching it's history

the hudson river divides new jersey from new  york state and before the tunnels were available  

to reach manhattan passengers had to transfer  from railroads to ferries which were crowded  

and sometimes delayed due to weather conditions  including ice and fog that frequently lengthened  

the trip so more or less it was difficult for  commuters from new jersey to reach manhattan  

what's more this area was also known to be  highly congested with waterfront cargo ships  

meaning that a tunnel was only a question of time  and technology after spending part of a night on  

a ferryboat stuck in the ice between jersey city  and manhattan colonel dewitt clinton a businessman  

from upstate new york who made his fortune on  the construction of the union pacific railroad  

and the utah silver mines conceived the idea to  construct a tunnel under the hudson in the early  

1800s clinton pressed the need for this tunnel so  much so that he undertook the preliminary surveys  

at his own expense to investigate the alignment  and feasibility of such a miraculous project  

as a result the hudson tunnel railroad company was  incorporated on may the 26th 1873 making clinton  

the corporation's president and operating as  chief project engineer financing became a priority  

and luckily the hudson tunnel railroad company  received 10 million dollars in funding from an  

englishman named trevor park with funding in place  design ideas began to flow clinton insisted that  

excavating the tunnels should be in a compressed  air environment this would require not using  

a tunneling shield or other acceptable forms  of protection against wall collapse clinton  

suggested that a compact air environment even  though dangerous would be adequate to uphold  

the tunnel walls long enough to install a  structural brick lining fortunately working  

under compressed air to repel water with sinking  vertical shafts was not a new technique however  

using compressed air for supporting the excavation  of a horizontal tunnel this was another matter he  

decided to patent the idea while stating quote  the distinguishing feature of my system however  

is that instead of using temporary facings of  timber or other rigid material i rely on the air  

pressure to resist the cavin of the wall or the  infiltration of water until the wall is completed  

this pressure is of course to be regulated by the  exigencies of the occasion and may be varied from  

anything above that of the atmosphere to 50 pounds  to the square inch which is about as much as the  

human system will bear with safety additional  measures were taken to protect the tunnel  

construction from unexpected leaks such as a  quote temporary shield of canvas against which the  

pressure instantly forces it and seals the leak  furthermore after finalizing the tunnel lining  

he would allow working debris to accumulate in the  bottom of the bore until the tunnel is completed  

leaving an opening only large enough for working  purposes by this means the area of the airlock  

the surface exposed to pressure and the  consequent liability to leaks are materially  

diminished construction of the tunnel began  on november the 17th 1874 with the sinking of  

a shaft on 15th street in jersey city the  submerged shaft was 9.1 meters in diameter and 30  

meters from the riverbank sadly work was halted  for five years on december the 15th 1874 due to  

litigation by delaware an injunction was brought  up concerning the tunnel's potential competition  

with the ferries operated by the delaware  lackawanna and western railroad company both  

were seeking financial compensation for property  acquired through eminent domain this resulted in  

a termination of construction until the matter was  cleared up five years later on september the 22nd  

1879 construction resumed workers that were  sometimes referred to as quote sandhogs used only  

manual labor with shovels or picks and sometimes  even dug out the soil by hand the excavation of  

the tunnel proceeded at a plotting pace advancing  an average of just four or five feet daily the  

tunnel ceiling was lined with quarter inch thick  iron plates and then the tunnel was encircled with  

a two and a half foot wide layer of bricks and  as previously suggested a tunneling shield was  

not used in the excavation process because the  designer believed that silt was strong enough to  

hold back the compressed air in the tunnel and  for the most part this technique was successful  

however a significant blowout occurred on july  the 21st 1880 when a leak developed on top of the  

tunnel letting out compressed air into the 30 feet  of silt between the tunnel and the river bottom  

the hole grew more extensive and ultimately  the river water flooded the tunnel trapping  

28 men eight men amazingly escaped through the  airlock but the remaining workers were trapped  

and killed the tunnel could not be pumped dry  and a cofferdam was unsuccessful so a rectangular  

caisson was sunk creating a workspace large enough  to repair the damaged sections of the tunnel  

tunnel construction resumed in january of 1881  and soon after general william smith joined the  

project as chief engineer and introduced several  improvements one positive addition to improving  

worker safety was installing a bulkhead near  the tunnel heading that included air locks  

workers could quickly access it in the event  of a blowout also the tunnel walls were lined  

with concrete instead of bricks and a pressurized  discharge pipe was introduced in july of 1881 work  

on another vertical shaft began on the new york  side of the river at the west end of morton street  

with the shafts at around 1.7 kilometers apart and  further blowouts would occur for example on the  

20th and 30th of august 1882 but fortunately  nobody was killed on either occurrence with  

over 1 million dollars spent in 1882 trevor park  died and finances diminished ultimately operations  

were suspended on the 4th of november 1882.  pumping was paused and the tunnels once again  

filled with water however by march the 20th of  1883 new arrangements were made and the pumps and  

compressors were restarted with work proceeding  by the 22nd of that same month by the 20th of  

july 22 meters of the northern tunnel and 7 meters  of the south tunnel had been constructed but work  

was terminated once more due to a lack of money  clinton unsuccessfully continued trying to find  

funding until 1887 and eventually left the project  in 1888. technical knowledge and expertise were  

sought out by british consulting engineers sir  john fowler and sir benjamin baker in late 1887  

they were questioned whether it was possible to  complete the tunnel for just 2.1 million dollars  

as estimated by american contractors baker visited  this site reporting in 1888 and their combined  

support for the project facilitated 1.5 million  dollars in british investment in 1889 construction  

resumed with a contract assigned to british  contractor s pearson and son founded in 1844.  

this time the excavation was carried out with the  safety of tunneling shields a technique used on  

the 1843 tams tunnel in london the shield had  a keen cutting edge around its face which was  

divided into nine compartments by vertical and  horizontal bulkheads and although everything was  

technically on track the project yet again faced  financial issues in july of 1891 with the bearings  

bank crisis which caused the british tunneling  effort to be suspended at this point the total  

length of the tunnel was over a kilometer from  the north tube and 178 meters for the south to  

and like an endless curse the project was  abandoned again in 1892 in 1895 english engineer  

charles matathis jacobs who had worked in  america since 1889 and was primarily known for  

his tunneling expertise was invited to assess the  practicality and cost of completing the tunnels  

which were waterlogged to within 1.2 meters of the  top of the jersey shaft his feasibility report was  

highly regarded though no action was taken until  the turn of the century in october of 1901 jacobs  

visited the abandoned tunnels with a lawyer from  tennessee who would ultimately become a politician  

william gibbs mcadoo mcadoo understood the  project's potential and designed a funding plan  

with mcadoo as its president and jacobs as chief  engineer on february the 6th 1902 the new york  

and jersey railroad company was incorporated  to undertake the completion of the project  

and assure adequate financing the work was resumed  under the direction of president william g mcadoo  

and despite the numerous obstacles the uptown  tunnels were finally completed the north tunnel  

was held through on march the 11th 1904 and the  south tunnel was held through on september the  

29th 1905. on december the 1st 1906 the new  york and jersey railroad company became the  

hudson and manhattan railroad company mcadoo was  the first person to walk from new jersey to new  

york through the new tunnels the construction of  the hudson tunnel took about 35 years to complete  

between 1874 and 1908. in 1907 the first trains  ran through the hudson river tunnel with one-way  

traffic in each bore on february the 25th 1908  president theodore roosevelt officially started  

the system's electricity supply by pressing a  button in the white house the launching train  

was filled with dignitaries such as new jersey  governor john franklin fort and new york governor  

charles evans hughes it took approximately 10 and  a half minutes to complete the east-west journey  

from manhattan to hoboken and then the hudson  and manhattan railroad began its public service  

at midnight and almost 100 000 passengers traveled  through the tunnel on its very first day meanwhile  

the idea for a second set of tunnels was  derived from a study of the ferry traffic  

this pair of tunnels would be located between  jersey city and the hudson terminal in lower  

manhattan with construction beginning in  september of 1905 the study concluded that  

a single pair of tunnels was insufficient for  the number of people commuting across the river  

and that ferries south of the tunnel were used  more heavily to meet the demand mcadoo presided  

over the start of construction for the second  pair of tunnels at about two kilometers downstream  

referred to as the downtown tunnels these  tunnels would reach nearly 6 000 feet in length  

and an amazing depth of 92 feet below the river  service on the downtown tunnels began in 1909  

and each of the terminal stations were designed  with platforms on both sides of the track so that  

passengers could exit one side of the train while  others entered from the other side the hudson and  

manhattan railroad tunnels operated profitably  and successfully and in january of 1910 more than  

4 million people were carried through them so it's  safe to say that the hudson and manhattan railroad  

was patronized profitable and successful in its  early years however between the 1920s and 30s  

the popularity of the automobile skyrocketed road  traffic was significantly increasing and ridership  

of the hudson and manhattan railroad dropped  drastically especially after the opening of the  

holland and lincoln tunnels the holland tunnel  was completed in 1927 with the opening ceremony  

broadcast on all local radio stations this  incredible new tunnel was named after its engineer  

and cost 48.5 million to build at the time it was  the longest underwater vehicle tunnel globally on  

opening day 20 000 people walk through the tunnel  for two hours and view the engineering marvel  

before opening to vehicles at midnight then we've  got the lincoln tunnel which opened to traffic  

in 1937 charging 50 cents per passenger car the  cost of construction was about 80 million dollars  

this tunnel consists of three vehicle tubes  each of which carries two lanes of traffic and  

lies 97 feet below the river's surface it was  named in honor of abraham lincoln both tunnels  

became a popular means of transportation now  we've already made full videos about both the  

lincoln and holland tunnel you should check those  out but one thing we didn't mention in either of  

those previous videos was the impact that these  modern marvels had on the hudson tunnel you  

might even say they added to the tunnel's curse  the recognition of the automobile combined with  

the 1930s economic depression led to a lack of  maintenance that eventually caused the condition  

of the railways to deteriorate this directly  impacted the further use of the rail tunnel in the  

1950s the hudson and manhattan railroad company  declared bankruptcy and in 1962 relinquished  

operation to the port authority of new york and  new jersey who agreed to look after the railroad  

this organization did improve the system they made  extensive repairs and improvements by installing  

new rolling stock through a division called  the port authority trans hudson corporation  

also known as path which remains in operation  to this very day in 1978 after a unanimous vote  

by the society's board of direction also known  as the american society of civil engineers the  

hudson and manhattan railroad tunnel was nominated  as a national historic civil engineering landmark  

then on october the 31st 1978 the  reveal of two bronze plaques designating  

the hudson and manhattan railroad tunnels as  a historic civil engineering landmark occurred  

one plaque was placed at the hoboken terminal with  the other plaque being placed at the world trade  

center you see the asce met section submitted  the nomination for the designation back in 1977  

with asce president walter e blessy unveiling  the bronze plaque in a conventional ceremony  

where he presented them to the port authority  in a formal speech additional administrators who  

addressed the audience were representatives of new  jersey and new york governors plus the mayor of  

new york city and hoboken many others attended  this ceremony but perhaps most noteworthy were  

members of mcadoo's family including his grandson  who was able to speak about how after many years  

of starts and abandonments beginning in 1874 his  grandfather was able to head the organization  

and lead the way to the completion of the railroad  project by 1910. unfortunately as the years have  

passed the hudson tunnel once again finds itself  in desperate need of revival you see the tunnels  

were essentially flooded during hurricane sandy  which prompted the creation of the hudson tunnel  

project which involves the construction of  a new hudson river rail tunnel serving penn  

station and the rehabilitation of the existing  sandy damaged north river tunnel according to  

hudsontunnelproject.com the project proposes to  rehabilitate the existing tunnel under the hudson  

river which carries amtrak and new jersey transits  northeast corridor passenger trains perhaps more  

ambitious is the construction of a new tunnel  that's needed to divert the existing rail traffic  

while the historic tunnel is being rehabilitated  the united states secretary of transportation  

recently had the opportunity to tour the hudson  river train tunnels he was accompanied by senator  

charles schumer who stated what we call our  visit today and subsequent actions is the gateway  

turnaround both politicians were able to see the  deterioration of the tunnel up close during the  

tour with the secretary of transportation  commenting quote you go into the tunnel and  

you look up and you see concrete spalling you can  start to see some of the rebar exposed underneath  

you can see the consequence of seawater coming  in accelerated by superstorm sandy and further  

degrading the infrastructure with the entire  technology of the tunnel being outdated  

the gateway tunnel project has already  received necessary approval with the  

secretary stating that he would quote talk through  any concerns about spending with local officials  

with over 30 years of development and many years  of operation the hudson tunnel still stands  

which i would say is a testament to new yorkers  stubbornness in managing to fulfill a dream but  

when considering the turbulence this project faced  from financing to competition with the automobile  

and now natural decay at the least it will  be interesting to see what fate has in store  

that's it for today don't miss our new york  history playlist click subscribe to check  

out new episodes every thursday and saturday and  until next time this is ryan socash signing off